Glenn Burke, 42, A Major League Baseball Player

Published: June 2, 1995

Glenn Burke, a former outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Oakland Athletics who was the first major league baseball player to publicly acknowledge his homosexuality, died Tuesday at Fairmont Hospital in San Leandro, Calif. He was 42.

The cause was complications from AIDS, said Pamela Pitts, the A's director of baseball administration.

Burke played in the majors for four and a half seasons, batting .237 and stealing 35 bases. But he left the game at the age of 27 in 1980 because, he said, too many people in baseball condemned his sexuality. "Prejudice drove me out of baseball sooner than I should have," Burke said in an interview with The New York Times last year. "But I wasn't changing."

He was hospitalized early last year when it was determined that he had AIDS.

In 1987, his right leg and foot were shattered when he was hit by a car in San Francisco.

His drug use, a part of his life for several years, escalated sharply after the accident, and he served time in prison for grand theft and possession of drugs. After that, he was sometimes seen wandering and panhandling in the predominately gay Castro district of San Francisco.

When his disease made it difficult for him to walk, he moved in with a sister, Lutha Davis, in Oakland.

Besides her and five other sisters, he is survived by his mother, Alice Burke, and a brother, Sidney, also of Oakland, Calif.